What if television producer David E. Kelly, creator of “L.A. Law,” “Ally McBeal” and other popular legal dramas, decided to produce a new television show, but instead of populating it with his usual cast of circus performers known more for their courtroom antics than their understanding of judicial process, he based the main character on a real life lawyer who embodied the ideals of the profession?
The show could center on a trial attorney for whom preparation is the key to winning a case, whose demeanor is relaxed, and who treats the participants in a trial with civility. Maybe his peers would be better speakers and think more quickly on their feet, but his zealous representation of his clients would generally win the day.
Or what if a television network decided to develop a new family drama in which the man of the house liked his job, was proud of his children and made decisions based on what would serve the needs of his wife and kids? Where could Kelly turn for inspiration?
Art Brock would be a good starting point for both shows.
Brock would probably laugh at the idea of being the wellspring of material for a television program and then apologize for his life and career not being more exciting. But his accomplishments are worth noting. He’s been a trial lawyer for almost 30 years, he has a win-loss ratio of about 90 percent, and he’s gained the admiration of his peers, who have made him a fellow of the Chattanooga and Tennessee Bar Associations.
What’s more, he’s been a husband to one woman nearly as long as he’s been an attorney and is a dad to three sons who are well on their way. His life might not be the stuff of great drama, but he’s creating a legacy of which he can be proud.
Life for Brock began in St. Louis. He was still living in the city when he chose to go to law school, due to his affinity for history and political science.
He attended St. Louis University School of Law, graduated and married in 1982, and then spent a year clerking for the Missouri Court of Appeals. Brock and his wife then moved to Roswell, N.M., where they had three children and he became a products liability lawyer representing the interests of General Motors across the state.
While a synopsis of the first few chapters of Brock’s life read like a carefully constructed narrative, he confesses to having had less direction than it appears.
“I enjoyed law school, so I was open to whatever was available to me in the legal field,” he says.
Although Brock hadn’t dreamed of becoming a products liability lawyer, the work interested him. He especially liked the enhanced injury cases, in which the plaintiff would claim his injury in a car wreck would not have been as severe had his automobile been properly designed and manufactured. The complexity of the cases and the process of peeling away the layers of what happened to reveal the truth fascinated Brock.
“There would be several things that caused one part of one injury, and while it might have been a serious injury, it was caused by more than a seat belt failure; it was also caused by the guy who ran the red light and hit the plaintiff. So we’d have to look at how the plaintiff would have moved in the car had his seat belt been working properly,” he says.
While Brock and his wife liked New Mexico, they wanted their children to get to know their relatives, so in 1990, they moved to Chattanooga, where they would be closer to family.
Brock went to work for Stophel & Stophel and continued his work in products liability. While he has good things to say about the firm, its practice was national in nature, and took him to Illinois, California and elsewhere to handle cases. His heart was at home, where his three boys were growing up, so in 1997, he decided to develop a local practice.
“The law is a time consuming and labor intensive field. But if you can do that labor close to home, you can handle issues that come up with your family better than if you’re working on the other side of the country,” he says.
Spears, Moore, Rebman & Williams offered Brock a job doing medical malpractice defense at the firm, and he took it. He says the transition was easy because of the similarities between products liability and medical malpractice.
“They’re both fields of professional negligence. Most product liability suits involve engineering design, manufacturing technique and other specialized expert fields; medical malpractice is all about specialized expert testimony, too. You still have to learn about the medicine involved, whether it’s pulmonology, cardiology or obstetrics, but as far as putting the cases together, the two are quite similar,” he says.
With regard to medical malpractice trials, Brock says the public generally believes the practitioner did something wrong and is callously trying to mitigate his or her losses. But he’s seen something entirely different, and wholly human, during his 15 years defending medical malpractice cases. When a patient challenges a doctor’s judgment and skills, he says the accusations tend to devastate the medical professional.
“When a patient has an unexpected outcome, it’s emotional for the doctor, too. They’re in the medical business to help people, so when someone says, ‘You hurt me, and you should have known better,’ it’s emotional for them. It’s satisfying for me to demonstrate on their behalf that they did the right thing.”
Brock is as passionate about the American system of justice as he is about defending his clients. However, he’s concerned about the future of the civil jury trial, which is rumored to be on its last legs. While Brock advocates alternate dispute resolution, he says the justice system will lose some of its relevance if the civil jury trial vanishes.
“Civil jury trials are a great tool for dispute resolution and self governance. If you take that away, who will fill that void? The problem with trials is they take too long to resolve and they’re too expensive. Most of that is on the legal profession,” he says.
Brock can weather the challenges, though, because he likes what he does.
“I learn new things every day, and it’s given me confidence in many of the other things I do,” he says.
The list of the other things Brock has done includes serving as president of the Brock-Cooper American Inn of Court, and serving on the boards of Hospice of Chattanooga, Veteran’s Memorial Park of Collegedale and the Downtown Sertoma Club. In 2009, he received the first annual Inn of Court Civility Award.
As dedicated as Brock is to his job and community, many of the choices he’s made clearly show his family comes first. And his devotion to his wife and children has paid off. His oldest son, Wes, is working in San Francisco as a programmer for Bigpoint, a creator of Web-based computer games. His middle son, Phil, is a senior at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and has applied to physical therapy school. His youngest son, Jay, is a junior at Washington University in St. Louis - and just took the LSAT.
“If any one of my sons is going to follow in my footsteps, it’ll be him,” he says, smiling.
Brock’s wife is temporarily in Alabama to tend to her parents. When he and she are able to be together, they like to travel and coach volleyball.
While it’s unlikely Brock and Kelly will cross paths, or that a television network will green light a show based on Brock’s career, Brock’s life tells an important story about a man who’s spending his life taking care of his family and doing his job well. The world can never have too many stories like his.